An orchid can be beautiful. It can smell sweet as well. But these flowering plants aren’t just nice to see and sniff. They can connect to culture and history. The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) hosts an orchid show each year. This is the 20th year of the event. The Orchid Show: Natural Heritage opened on February 18.
The NYBG 2023 orchid show features thousands of colorful flowers. Some shine bright white in the garden’s giant greenhouse. Several sparkle with a pretty pink hue. There are purples and yellows and bold blues too. Some are striped or spotted. A few feel fuzzy. Many hang high, and others grow low.
Each NYBG orchid show has a guest designer. This year it’s Lily Kwong. Her family came from Shanghai, China. She grew up with old paintings of Chinese mountainsides in her home. Many types of orchids grow on those mountains. Kwong used her to help her design the flower show. She chose to use orchids that came from Asia too.
Kwong said she wanted this year’s orchid show to “offer a sense of community.” And she hoped it would teach about the “ancient wisdom and traditions.” She explained how it connected to her family history. “The piece took shape through exploration of my roots stretching back generations to Shanghai,” said Kwong. She called the design her “most work.”
Kwong is the first woman of color to be a guest designer for the NYBG orchid show. She said she wanted to “celebrate an Asian-centered perspective.” There have been recent acts of violence against the Asian American community.
Kwong said she designed this orchid show “to offer a bridge of cultural understanding.”
People from across the world have already visited the NYBG to smell the flowers. That includes Caitlin Stewart, who popped inside the show in its first weekend. “I loved it!” she told News-O-Matic. “My favorite was the slipper orchids,” Stewart explained. “I’d never seen them before!”
Kwong hopes all the visitors will enjoy the orchids. But she also wants them to use the flowering plants to think more deeply about different cultures. Kwong said she hoped the show would “act as an invitation to celebrate the that make up our country.”
The Orchid Show: Natural Heritage will be open through April 23.
Updated February 21, 2023, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
